17 December | EVERYONE
«This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.» 2 John 1:6
Giovanni despairs at the inconsistencies of his mad heart. He loves his wife. She is the everyday, the stable, the safe, and yet he seeks adventure, the unknown, fleeting, and exciting. What a sad reality! He has grown tired of his wife’s love and unknowingly runs in search of pain and guilt. He is not happy. He feels disoriented and lost. He believes that God has abandoned him and no longer loves him.
The reason for his anxiety is that infidelity nullifies man’s trust in God’s promises. The unfaithful person believes that God is also unfaithful, and whenever they think of God’s love, they do so from the perspective of their own unfaithful love and wonder, “How can God fulfill His promise to love me, if I am not able to fulfill the love that I once promised my spouse?”
Human love, however sincere it may seem, is tainted with selfishness. But with God things are different. He loves us no matter what we do. It is His nature, and He wants to share it with us. And as the apostle John tells us today, this is what his “commandments” consist of, that we too should love.
Obviously, love cannot be commanded or demanded, it cannot be the result of an order or obligation. What John is telling us, and it is something he reiterates in his epistles, is that it makes no sense to say that we love God and keep His commandments if we do not love our fellow humans (cf. 1 John 4:20). If we genuinely love God and want to follow Him, this will undoubtedly be noticeable in the love for others that springs from our transformed heart. And if we do not love our neighbor, then let us not say that we love God!
Take Action
Ponder the meaning of the word “commandment(s)” in today’s verse and other passages in John’s epistles. It is important that we avoid a legalistic view of our faith in order to be the light of the world that truly reflects Jesus.